


Floriography

by finch (afinch)



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:01:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/pseuds/finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete and Myka try to figure out exactly what is going on at the Dali museum while Claudia and Jinks encounter a child with autism who holds the secrets to solving an artifact-related four murders. With a little Artie tossed in for good measure. A case-fic. There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floriography

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HopefulNebula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulNebula/gifts).



> Your letter said you had a theme on Niven's fourteenth law except for "one beloved exception" and I wanted to show you that it didn't need to be an exception!
> 
> There is some slight autism ignorance, as a warning.

Artie pushed back from his desk, checking the files, then handing one each to Myka and Claudia.

"Something's going hinky at the Dali museum," Artie said "making people go all Dali-esque, weird facial features, droopy limbs, you get it." He waved his hand. "And we have an artifact that's killed four people and one witness to all four deaths."

"Oo," Claudia said, looking through her file. "Kid too. Should be easy."

"Artie, they get the easier assignment?" Pete pouted. "Bet we'll finish before you."

"Deal!"

"No!" Artie's roar was deep and shook the walls of the Warehouse office. "This is not a race! Understood?" He pushed up his glasses and glared.

All four of them nodded, but the second they turned, Claudia flashed Pete two hand signals, and Pete nodded. Double or nothing, $50.

"I saw that."

Claudia flinched, but Pete turned back with an "we're totally innocent" look on his face. Artie just sighed and waved them off.

***

"We're in St. Petersburg. Florida." Myka moaned, fanning herself. "In the middle of August."

"At least we got into the museum," Pete reminded her. "Could be worse, we could be outside."

"Is the air even on?"

"Now you sound like me."

Myka just rolled her eyes. "Come on, we've got to find what's an artifact, before more people get all twisted up."

"At least no-one's had a clock melted into them."

"Yet."

***

"Melody Jackson, age 7," Claudia read from the file. "Should be a snap. We'll get her to talk, neutralize the artifact, and be back in Univille before Pete and Myka know what hit them. Let's go, Jinksie."

"Shouldn't we … I don't know, find out more a bit about the kid first?"

"What's to know? Kid. Witness. Artifact. Come on-" she shoved open the passenger door. "Don't make me pull rank on you."

With a sigh that could rival Artie's, Steve got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. "You gonna pull rank for everything? Driving, artifact extraction, where we stop to eat-"

"Hey now-" she held up a warning finger and wagged it slightly. "Everyone knows the natural sea salt they put on Wendy's fries is better for you."

"I'm about certain that's not true."

"Aw, Jinksie, you'll learn. Eventually." She rapped on the door to the house and plastered a winning smile on her face. "Hi, we're investigating several deaths in the area, and we need to talk to Melo-"

"You're not the first," the woman, presumably Melody's mother, snapped. "She won't say anything to you any more than she won't say anything to the others who have been by. But come on, I'll show you to the sun room."

"Claud," Steve whispered. "You sure you know what we're getting into?"

"It's just a kid," she whispered back. "How hard can it be?"

***

"Anything new or unusual in the last few days?" Pete licked his pencil and looked at the curator while Myka examined behind them.

"No, nothing at all - don't touch that, it's part of our Dali Does Alice collection to go out next week."

Myka stopped and Pete nodded - they were thinking the same thing. "So by nothing new …"

"Those aren't _new_ , the curator said, haughtily. "They were on loan, and now we're putting them for display - and what _are_ you doing?"

Myka ignored him, rifling though the paintings with her gloves on. "Pete? Come take a look at these."

"Whoa. It's like one acid trip too many for Alice - these are intense."

Now the curator puffed up, "Yes, we are impressed with how Dali did Alice in Wonderland. He used real objects as inspiration."

"Are any of them in the museum?" Myka and Pete asked at the same time.

***

Claudia leaned against the wall outside the sun room, snapping at her gloves. "Okay. Wasn't expecting _that_. How can you tell when she's lying, but not what she's saying?"

"She's seven and -"

"Autistic, yeah yeah. How do we get the information out of her?"

"Child with autism. She's not a -"

"Maybe I have something in here that'll work." Claudia slung the knapsack off her shoulder and rummaged around. "No, no, no, no. Maybe?" She held up a strange looking metal device with lots of knobs.

"No." Steve's hands covered the device and gently pried it from Claudia's hands. "There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently."

"You're pulling the Buddhist wisdom card on me?"

"She's seven. She has autism. She loves flowers. She can talk to us, she knows what happened, we just have to figure out how to talk on the same level."

"You cannot be serious."

Steve looked back into the sun room, a determined frown on his face. "We need a flower store."

"You really cannot be serious. This is Theodore Annemann's -"

"No."

"He was holding this the night he committed suicide in front of h-"

"No."

"It lets you pluck memories from-"

"No! She's not a machine, Claud. She's a scared little girl who can't figure out why we're not listening to what she's saying."

"And how is a _flower shop_ going to be more useful than something that oh, I don't know, gets us the information we need?"

Steve licked his lips and glanced back into the sun room, where Melody was fingering a begonia, "I'll drive. But she's thinking about how to talk to us as much as I am." Then, softer, "She's a person, not a machine."

Claudia rolled her eyes, "She's annoying me."

"Then don't be here!" Steve snapped. "She's terrified and you want to steal her memories!"

"That would help! Then she wouldn't have them anymore!"

"If she didn't have autism, Claud, would you still want to steal them? Or is it just easier? I'm going to the flower shop. Come, don't come. I don't care."

"Jinks!" Claudia called after him. "Screwing up again, Donovan," she muttered, slumping against the wall.

***

"Artie, I am telling you, he's gone bonkers, wants to talk to her with flowers."

"Flowers?"

"Yeah, she's autistic," Claudia sighed into the Farnsworth. "I don't know what to do but let him at this point."

"Let me know how it goes. I don't want anyone else dying."

"Sure thing." She snapped the Farnsworth shut and anxiously looked down the hallway. "C'mon, Jinksie."

As if on some cosmic cue, Steve walked in with several bouquets of flowers.

"I really hope you know what you're doing."

"There's more in the car."

"Did you buy the whole flower shop?"

"Almost."

"This better work," Claudia muttered, heading out to the car.

Several minutes later, she was watching the two have some bizarre conversation.

Begonia, Amaryllis, White Chrysanthemum, Ivy, Lavender, then Ivy and Lavender again. And again.

"What's she-"

"Shh!"

Steve studied the flowers and countered with Ivy, Lavender, and Pansy and was met quickly with a striped carnation and a pink rose.

"Not the mom, but someone the mom knows," Steve said. "That's who has our artifact, I think."

"Think?!"

"I asked her to trust me," Steve said quietly, watching Melody play with the begonia. "Asked her to trust me, all I wanted to do was help."

"You tried that earlier and said she was lying."

"That was when I was just asking instead of - look, Claud, she's not like you and me, you have to know that. She sees the world differently, communicates differently. That doesn't make it wrong, just different."

Claudia blew some hair out of her face, "Minds? That think as well as we do …?"

"But differently."

"Alright. So you told her to trust you - how do you know all this shit about flowers?"

"My mom. Owned a flower shop. Growing up. Melody - I told her to trust me, that I wanted to help. She said she saw a lot of death, and I said I could make it stop, if she just told me where it was coming from. She said someone was doing something big, someone she has loyalty to. I asked if it was her mom, she said no, but a friend. I think she means it's a friend of her mom's."

"Time to go ask mommy dearest some questions."

***

"One of these will give us a clue," Myka said, staring at the potential artifacts. "Even if none of them are the artifact."

"Hey Myka? This says 'replica' on it. As in, not the original. As in-"

"Artifact. A poppy? Who would have a poppy? Sisters? Dali came to the US at the peak of the war in Europe. He wouldn't have been on the Alice-was-just-high-hype, that came after his time."

"And whoever has the poppy, sisters whatever, what do you have to do with it? And uh, why sisters?"

Myka pointed, "Red sister, blue Alice. Alice woke up, realized it was all a dream. Her sister was cradling her. Poppies are-"

"Heroin."

Myka shook her head. "No, they're sleep, peace. Death. They're also memory and resurrection. It's why they fell asleep in the Wizard of Oz. They weren't high."

"You say they weren't high. But fine. Sisters. What kind? And don't vets wear poppies?"

"Pete! That's it! We're looking for war veteran sisters!"

"Okay. How do we find them? There have to be hundreds of them."

"We call Artie and see who, if anyone, is missing a poppy."

***

"How are you so good at this?"

"At what?"

"At Melody, at flowers, at - at knowing what to do with her? I have no idea. And you got so _defensive_ earlier, like I was - I don't know. I was just trying to help." She played at the zipper on her jacket.

Steve sighed and leaned against the wall with her, "I have a cousin. Emily. When she was a baby, she didn't do what most babies do, and put anything in her mouth - it just wasn't how she saw the world. Which meant she didn't learn how to feed herself on her own. She had to go to therapy to be taught how to do it - how to do a lot of things. I didn't really pay that much attention until she was about to go to Kindergarten and the school said she couldn't."

"Oh my god, Jinksie. That's awful."

"That wasn't even the worst. My aunt and uncle had to fight the school district to allow her in. She goes to school with - I don't know the official term for it, but it's like a therapist and guider, someone who helps her communicate. She uh, loves space, and the stars, and everything to do with them, she can name all the constellations, and all the stars in them, and tell you the distances between each star in light years, but if you ask her to pass the salt at dinner, she'll scream and cover her ears, because she can't figure out what you're asking her to do."

"So you just …"

"Learn. Learn with them, instead of trying to dictate that your way of the world is the right way to see the world. Emily's a million times smarter than I am, but you wouldn't know it the way we set up intelligence tests."

Claudia thought a moment, then nodded, "And the flowers? How'd you know Melody could - could talk in flowers?"

He laughed, "That was actually a guess. She was playing with the begonia the whole time we were in there, right when she walked in, she went over to it and didn't stop playing with it."

"Well, we still don't know what the artifact is. We don't even know if Melody can tell us what it is."

"We know a friend of her mom's is causing death."

Claudia nodded and still played with her jacket. "I wish I could … be a people person. Like you."

You used a Tesla grenade the first time I met you," Steve said, without any hesitation. "There is no way I could come up with half the stuff you do. It's why we make a nice pair. I'll teach you, you teach me."

"As long as we don't have to be nice when we talk to mommy dearest."

"Yeah, where did she go?"

"She was on the phone with her- shit. Boyfriend." She pulled out her Tesla and blew on it, grinning at Steve. "Ready partner?"

Steve pulled out his own Tesla and nodded. "Always."

***

Myka snapped the Farnsworth shut. "The Milford Museum. In Milford, Delaware, had a wishbone belonging to one of the Levitsky sisters. They were nurses in France during WWII. Would lay poppies at the wishbone in remembrance. Two days ago, someone broke in and stole the wishbone -"

"And a poppy."

"Right. And a poppy. I bet …" she wandered around, frowning. "I bet they came here with it. Maybe accidentally. The poppy became an artifact, infused with the sister's desire for remembrance … and … and what- what am I missing Pete?"

"And something here helped it. Or else-"

"Two artifacts?"

"No. Maybe … maybe the replica is just a red herring. Let's think how Dali and two WWII sisters were connected."

"Inspiration!" Myka shouted. "Dali was inspired by various things. What if someone thought the painting was the sisters - Dali was a surrealist, it wouldn't have been those sisters who inspired him, but someone connected to the sisters thinks it's - the sisters are still alive. So our person -"

"Wants to give them the painting?"

"Or just show them. He lures the sisters here with their wishbone."

"That's … way outside the box."

Myka's Farnsworth buzzed and she flipped it open, "Artie, we're almost there, we just can't get all the pieces to fit right."

"A nurse who served with the sisters is missing," Artie said over the Farnsworth. "Has severe dementia. Loved Dali. The sisters talked about going to skip across the border to Spain to see Dali, if only there weren't a war. Talked about laying tributes to him-"

"Like a poppy. Got it," Myka said, snapping the Farnsworth closed. "The nurse sees the Dali painting of a poppy, maybe lays the poppy she has down -"

"The curator said they'd been on loan, how'd she see it?"

"She's got dementia, right? Maybe she's confused, wanders where she shouldn't … sees the painting being unloaded, puts the poppy on it - and creates an artifact."

"Anyone who touches it - gets all wonky."

"So now …"

"We have to find that flower."

***

"We sure this is a good idea?"

"Jinksie, come on, where is your sense of adventure? Barging into a guys apartment who has a deadly artifact we have no idea what it is? What could _possibly_ go wrong?"

"Death?"

"You're not a real agent until an artifact tries to kill you."

"Been there. Done that."

"Damn, I don't even get to break in my partner?"

"Okay, so we know Melody was there all four times. How could that have happened and he not be there all four times?"

"I don't know. We'll figure it out when we get inside. Ready and -" She pushed the door open and tumbled inside.

A short search later revealed no-one home.

"Time to take a look around," Claudia grinned, snapping her purple gloves on. "Now, Melody was at church for two of them, school for one, and at a playgroup for the other. All of the deceased were adults … Come on, Jinks, help me out here."

"Why murder people Melody knows?"

Claudia tipped her head, "Does that spoon look a little weird to you?"

"Looks old -"

"Careful."

"Open the bag."

A jolt of artifact inside artifact bag and one neutralized spoon.

"Now to get back to Univille before Pete and Myka do."

"On it."

"You drive."

Steve just shook his head and laughed, jingling his keys.

***

"A flower of remembrance," Myka said softly, twisting it in her fingers. "Who knew it could cause so much damage?"

"Memory is a powerful thing," Artie said. "The mind is -"

"Vast. Way too many ways to think inside of it," Claudia said. "Jinksie here can tell you all about that one."

"Yeah, what was your artifact?"

"Janie Lou Gibbs' cooking spoon. Killed her whole family by poisoning their food with arsnic," Steve said. "Our little girl's mother's boyfriend used it to make food to poison anyone who said mean things about Melody."

"Wow, that's really sad," Myka frowned.

"On the upside," Claudia said. "I learned some new Buddhist stuff."

"It's not Buddhist," Steve finally clarified. "Larry Niven's fourteenth law -"

"Oh, about the minds!" Pete said. "That think the same way you do, but differently."

"That means the same thing, Pete."

"Myka, the guy was a science-fiction -"

"Bookshop. Dad. There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently."

"Speaking of, Pete, you owe me fifty."

"Not a fair fight! She left the poppy in the gift shop and we had to find all the people who had touched it, and some of them didn't want to be changed back and …"

"No, no, no, no," Claudia shook her head. "My money. Pay up man."

"Maaaan."

"This is why," Artie intoned, "you shouldn't bet on cases."

"Oho!" Steve said, raising his glass of milk. "To that I will drink!"

**Author's Note:**

> I could not have done this without several people: TL, elfwreck, and vocal_bard, as well as the immeasurable amount of support from chatlings, thank you so much!


End file.
